From what I have seen most bots (even xathis) did not have any global strategy and only made local decisions. Here is a quote from xathis' writeup: "Other than moving ants away from my hills via missions, every move i make depends entirely on the local environment of the ant."

So I am wondering whether anyone used any global strategies? Here are some examples of global strategies that I could think of:

* Deciding which of your ants need the most help and sending ants there to help out* Deciding which of your hills are under the biggest threat and sending ants there to help out* Deciding which paths (towards enemy hills) are less guarded and sending your ants there, even though these paths take longer to traverse* Trying to work out how many there are players and adapting your strategy accordingly. For example, if you know that there is only one other player then you should be more aggressive and willing to accept 1:1 fights.* Trying to work out the number of enemy ants of each player. If you have enough ants then you can choose to attack the player with the fewest ants* Trying to limit other player's access to food resources* Predicting where enemy ants could be. I think I've seen this mentioned a few times, but no formal description of the approach* Finding the choke points in the map and blocking them intentionally (instead of simply blocking them by chance)